The arrest of Pakistani-American Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative David Coleman Headley, that busted an LeT plot to carry out terror strikes in India, has been classified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as its second biggest case for the year 2009.
The Headley case figured at number two in the 10 biggest cases of the year in a list in which the case of two young American extremists was placed on the top.
"The threat posed by extremists is real and it continues to morph and evolve in new and dangerous ways. We had our hands full during the year, from heading off potential plots on US soil to identifying Americans being recruited to wage jihad overseas," the FBI said in its statement.
Headley was arrested by the FBI in October along with his schoolmate and friend Tahawwur Hussein Rana on charges of planning terrorist attacks in India and Denmark.
He has now also been charged with being involved in the Mumbai terror attacks in November 2008, which killed more than 170 people including six US nationals.
At the top was the case of the 'Jihadists of Georgia' in which the FBI busted a potential terror plot by two young Americans Ehsanul Islam Sadequee and Syed Haris Ahmed.
"Their story is indicative of both the evolving homegrown extremist threat and the FBI's post 9/11 intelligence-driven investigations," it said.
"With little more than an Internet connection and the radicalising influences of overseas terrorists, two middle-class young men in Atlanta went from rhetoric to plotting jihad," the FBI said.
Among other prominent cases listed for this year are young men from Minnesota travelling to Somalia to join extremist groups, Najibullah Zazi's attempted bombing of federal building, arrest of seven men including father and two son on charges of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and to wage jihad overseas.
Other foiled plots include arrest of four people outside a New York synagogue and charged with planning to blow up Jewish targets and shoot down military planes; convicting of five men of providing material support to the Al Qaeda and planning attacks on US targets, including the Sears Tower in Chicago; and Ali al-Marri -- the Al Qaeda "sleeper" operative working in the US pled guilty to charges relating to his role in the 9/11 attacks.
